Recent content by FahrradFahren

I've always loved the design of 125 Summer across the street: varied, older facades fronting the street with the tower rising behind them. It makes the street feel much more inviting.

I would love to see an attempt at this. I'm getting really tired of the "we're respecting the architectural history of the area by using brick!" attitude. I feel like I rarely see large buildings proposed in Boston lately that take any more inspiration from the past than the cladding material...

Agreed. Rushing around and getting angry on the road just isn't helpful; we'll all get where we're going at about the same speed anyway once you factor in the traffic lights. Might as well relax and enjoy the ride!

It would be a great candidate for this. It seems like there's some lack of coordination between MassDOT and the city of Boston though. In the last 5 years, MassDOT spent about $5.7 million on Morton Street from Blue Hill Ave to Harvard St and the intersection with Gallivan Blvd. These projects...

Another thing that's worth looking at here is the transition from Blue Hill Ave to the under-construction Cummins Hwy. redesign. Cummins Hwy. is an amazing project for most of its length, but like some other Boston street redesigns (Tremont St. comes to mind) the project bounds didn't extend all...

That's probably why they've proposed this design, but it still feels like a missed opportunity though in the middle of such a good project. Seems really shortsighted to rebuild an intersection in the middle of planning the entire corridor rebuild, and then excluding that intersection from any...

A couple other observations about gaps in the proposed bike lanes: There's a big dip in bike lane quality where Blue Hill Ave intersects with Morton Street: there are no protected areas to wait for turns, and bike traffic is made to share space with cars throughout the intersection. Also note...

I saw a few people with strollers and motorized wheelchairs in the mockup today. They could fit through the narrower sections when the seats were empty, but there definitely wouldn't have been enough room if people were sitting down. It really doesn't seem like there's more room to work with...

I asked a T employee about this at the mockup event today, he told me the windows are designed this way so that they're easier to replace. There's nothing prohibiting them from using the larger exterior glass panels, but he cited this style of window requiring less disassembly of the interior...

This design competition has some great discussion and new ideas for urban density that could be achieved with specific zoning and building code changes (the two-stairwell requirement comes up a lot). The competition was organized by the Vancouver Urbanarium Society and as such I think it focuses...

In buildings on a smaller lot it's just comical how much space two stairwells take up, and how close to each other they are. Take a look at this building in Roxbury (slide 27 is a good overview of the floor plan).

The mixed traffic section of the E branch is getting redesigned, by 2027 it won't be running in mixed traffic anymore and will have accessible stations.

I agree, I've got my skepticisms here and there but I think it's shaping up to be a lot better than Boston Landing both in the architecture and the street design.

Of course, the end goal for the developer is to sell or rent units, and they're going to present everything in the best possible light in order to do so. Makes sense! On the other hand, how often to we buy things only to find out we've been duped by the marketing? I just wonder how much thought...

The renders are always showing beautiful lighting in the summer, with the windows reflecting blue skies and greenery. I wish developers would accept how gray Boston is for so much of the year and show us what their buildings are going to look like in the winter. It gives the impression that...